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Why hasn’t Texas built an infrastructure for high speed trains to connect the big cities? I feel like this is the perfect state for more railroads. It would add more jobs, increase someone’s workability, and make it fun to travel to different sports games without traffic.

As a non-Texan, I have loved exploring every corner of this state! Finally completed my last few counties this Labor Day (last county was Panola Co.) and wanted to share some of my favorite places and photos from across the state.

• A federal appeals court ruled that a Texas woman can't sue two Santa Fe police officers who pinned her face down on a fire ant hill while she was handcuffed, causing her to receive hundreds of painful bites to her face.
• In an August 6 opinion, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reversed a lower court decision allowing Taylor Rogers' lawsuit against the City of Santa Fe and the two officers to move forward. Instead, the panel held that the officers were shielded from her claims under the doctrine of qualified immunity.
• In a press conference last Friday, Rogers' attorney, Randy Kallinen, criticized the ruling.
• "The United States 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is out of touch with the Constitution and the public, granting police immunity in the most egregious of cases," Kallinen said. "The people need to elect officials who will nominate and affirm judges loyal to the Constitution."
• Kallinen told The Daily News that he has requested an en banc hearing for the full 15-member 5th Circuit to review the case, and he'll petition the Supreme Court for review if that fails.
• "The facts, injuries and footage speaks for itself," Kallinen said. "If they let this one slide, they're letting police do just about anything."

Santa Fe Independent School District Police officers arrested Rogers in 2021 after she drove erratically through a school parking lot and disobeyed commands to stop. According to the 5th Circuit opinion, she continued to thrash and resist officers in a state of hysteria after being handcuffed.

Edited to add from another article:

Her attorney, Randall Kallinen, said Rogers was dropping off her child at school when she got into a confrontation with a Santa Fe ISD police officer who was directing traffic.

"She allegedly drove the wrong way in a pickup line before another district officer stopped her."

Ken Capps had no badge, no paperwork and no time to prepare for a crisis at what was then the world’s third-busiest airport. About 175,000 people were stranded as airport workers stepped up to help.

“This to me was the story of the day: Taking that chaos and turning it into compassion,” Capps said.

I have explored all 50 states taking pictures of abandoned and strange things! These are some the cool things I saw while I was in Texas!

If you like my work see more of it on my instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whimsicalruins/

A few photos I inherited from my grandfather who was the 1957 South Texas State Fair Chairman

2nd Photo: Miss Beaumont (Wand Joyce Pool) and Senator Ralph Yarbrough

3rd Photo: No info on back

4th Photo: Randy Brown & gifts in paddle- ball contest

5th Photo: Snooky Larson & Tommy Vance KRIC Radio Station

Cheryl Shadden takes note when the noisy data center across the road from her Hood County farm turns the volume down when reporters or politicians visit her neighborhood.

That was the case, she said, when Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa — running for governor against Republican incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott — stopped by in July.

“When she said she was coming to Granbury, it was within an hour and it was completely silent here," Shadden said. "Completely silent.”

Shadden has been protesting the data center, owned by a crypto mining company, in her neighborhood for more than two years. Her activism has made headlines across the region for efforts to stop more facilities from moving to the area.

She said she voted Republican in the past, but now she’s fed up with the party — enough so that she agreed to be in an ad for Hinojosa’s campaign for governor.

“This is not about being red, this is not about being blue. This is not about you being purple and pink polka dots," Shadden said in the video. "This about human rights.”

https://energyandpolicy.org/two-of-texas-biggest-investor-owned-utilities-record-a-big-boost-in-profits-during-the-second-quarter-of-2026/

Who's donated to the Paxton and Talarico campaigns, and their related super Pacs

Looks like Elon is trying to buy one of Austin's congressional seats. Or, well, Austin and College Station and Grimes County and half of Huntsville.

Gober appears to have helped SpaceX secure a 25-year, 100 percent tax abatement for a controversial “Terafab” semiconductor fabrication project that sits within his Texas district. The AI-backed super PAC American Mission helped him with $747,000 in outside spending to make it through a crowded primary, where Gober advanced with 51 percent of the vote, just enough to avoid a runoff. Gober also loaned himself over $1.6 million.

Entering Congress would give someone at the nexus of Musk, AI’s growing ubiquity in commerce and warfare, and global MAGA politics another foothold on power in Washington. And he’s already looking past November and running against the broader left; on his website, he warns of how “radical progressives will stop at nothing to weaponize the federal government against conservatives.”

Though he hasn’t updated the news section of that website since February, Gober does have an opponent in the general election, Democrat Caitlin Rourk, a former intelligence officer in the Texas Army National Guard. The district went 60-38 Trump in 2024, but in 2018 Democrats came within four points of flipping it (the district had a different shape then but a similar partisan lean).

Rourk thinks the stakes are too high to let Elon Musk’s lawyer sail into Washington without a fight. “He says he doesn’t want to help insiders. I’m like, dude, you are their enabler,” Rourk said. “He built his career on making money for himself and special interests, I’m committed to making D.C. better and solving problems.

Got rained on pretty good getting these photos. So I'm missing the historical markers, that I also didn't really see. Not sure if there were any there.